


Lilies That Fester

by Matloc



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, M/M, Oops, double oops, florist!Kuroko, if you know flower language you'll probably be spoiled within the first scene of this fic, or those who can read kanji
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2015-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-07 02:40:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5440454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Matloc/pseuds/Matloc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Sonnet 94 and that official art of Akashi in a suit.</p><blockquote>
  <p><em>“They’re filth,”</em> she’d spat out once when Tetsuya asked her about it. <em>“Nothing else gets tainted so quick and easy.”</em><br/></p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Lilies That Fester

**Author's Note:**

> Coupled with my coffee shop fic, could this be my crusade against popular Young Adult-ish AUs??? most probably

Taking care of flowers is more taxing than one might think. Indeed, they bring a different set of commitments from what your dog or cat might entail, but the joy in seeing them grow, under your love and care, is often tempered in similar wavelengths.

Tetsuya feels none of these things, at least not to an exceptional degree, yet he continues to singlehandedly run this place with the diligence of a duty-bound monk. Duty to his late grandmother—the original proprietor—for one. Then for more self-serving incentives, like the solitude a humble flower shop offers. Nestled against the corner of a street that only leads to somewhat remote areas, _Kuroko’s Flower Farm_ serves as a pleasant reprieve from daily city hubbub, as the world comes to life everyday with an overwhelming assortment of bustling crowds and car horns to greet him through the bedroom window.

Despite the promise of sweet-scented tranquility amidst flowers, Tetsuya’s mind, too, shifts into gear as soon as he unlocks the shop. He enters the door with a mental checklist, an item for each step he takes as he walks around to scan the flowers decorating the interior, curling around shelves and peeking through windows. His job is to keep them healthy, smelling rich and fresh to entice passers-by.

In case of his grandmother however, Tetsuya imagines a mostly different state of affairs. First, if her lungs hadn’t collapsed, she’d be here screaming at Tetsuya to “remove those disgusting weeds at once!” And if she was feeling particularly impatient, as she often used to be on busier days, she’d rip out the white lilies with her own hands from their pots sitting harmlessly by the window. Her immense hatred for those flowers was no news to anyone who’d known her for more than a week.

 _“They’re filth,”_ she’d spat out once when Tetsuya asked her about it. _“Nothing else gets tainted so quick and easy.”_

Out of respect for the dead, he conceded to her wishes, at least until he caved in to his mother’s insistence on how they good they were for business. It was so apparent that he could never really deny it. Those flowers are, after all, quite the local treasure. One look at the accounts would reveal the margin of daily sales his white lilies tend to surpass.

So he raises them with great care, only feeling satisfied once they can glisten proudly under the sunlight as they crowd around the shop window.

Today proves to be no different, because they lure in a red-haired customer minutes after Tetsuya opens shop.

“Welcome,” he recites when he hears the familiar chime of a bell. “What might you be looking for today?”

A brief pause makes him realize that the man’s head is still glued towards the direction of the lilies. He’s already inputting the name in the computer when the man turns—and Tetsuya almost freezes up, his hand falling still on the keyboard.

How his brain failed to register such striking features before severely bothers Tetsuya. Not only as part of what his job entails, but because the man’s one gold eye pins Tetsuya with an intensity that makes his nerves go cold. His other eye brims with a clear red matching the carnations he’s standing next to.

Red carnations: beautiful, mesmerizing in a full bouquet—and Tetsuya’s least favorite flower.

His throat tightens a bit as he makes his way to his customer, remembering that another second sitting at the cash register would count as breach of decorum.

“I would like these.” The red-haired man cranes a pale neck towards the lilies he was perusing just seconds ago. “A few of those.” A gloved hand points at one of the shelves farther along the aisle, adorned with white camellias. “And some white chrysanthemums,” he finishes, never even asking if there were any in stock.

“Would you like it as a bouquet?” He gets a nod, prompting him to gather the flowers from their displays while the man heads towards the counter. Only the sound of expensive boots clacking echoes throughout the shop, giving a hollow, emptier ambience to this place. Tetsuya brushes it off as the early morning air, hanging drearily over a world still mostly trapped in slumber.

Reaching the counter, he spreads a wrapping sheet on the top, asking, “Is there a specific arrangement you’d like?”

The man simply raises an eyebrow, dual-colored eyes locking blue ones in an expectant stare. “Impress me.”

Tetsuya gets right to it, having expected as much. He places the flowers on the paper, arranging them in groups of threes, stacking them with bear grass to act as filler amidst the monotone of white dressed in blooming shapes. By the time he’s done, the flowers are nestled perfectly within the lavender sheet. A sight he’s grown used to long ago yet, throughout all these years, the simple pulse of pride stays familiar to the veins running along his palms every time he finishes a flower arrangement.

It hikes tenfold when the taller man gives Tetsuya what could be in every sense perceived as a nod of approval. Even now, nothing quite compares to making a customer happy with his piece of work. Every bouquet or basket he prepares is, in his mind, ultimately a piece of himself he’s giving away for another person to enjoy. Each layered within a unique mold of shapes and sizes and colors, because he tends to forgo a perfectionist’s eye for detail to instead suit his own image of the persons who enter this shop.

More often than not, it proves how he is a good judge of character.

Even if this one customer makes Tetsuya’s skin prickle under his gaze.

“Would you like this to be dedicated to anyone in particular, sir?” he asks, trying to ignore the tension in his nerves.

“This will be fine. You can keep the change.” The other man slides a brand new 10,000 yen note across the tabletop, picking up the bouquet, and leaves the store as abruptly as he came.

As the chime of the bell fills in the empty space of the shop, Tetsuya braves a shiver, wondering if winter’s coming early this year.

「 死 」

It’s the middle of the night when Tetsuya wakes up with a start, and his back muscles burn at the sudden movement. A book lies sprawled on the floor, next to his feet.

He rubs at his eyes, trying to smudge away the sting from the orange light spilling softly from a desk lamp. A glance at the blinking lights of his table clock tells him at least three hours must have passed since he fell asleep. No wonder his neck hurts so much. He even hears a light crack, for a second half-scaring him about the possibility of his head actually falling off.

He stifles a yawn as he bends down to pick up the novel, trying to rack his tired brain for a number remotely close to the page he left it at. He slowly leafs through the pages once his vision begins to adjust to the light. Its weak flickering keeps Tetsuya at the bare edges of darkness as it looms over his shoulder.

The page he stops at may perhaps not be the one he’s searching for, but it’s a peculiar little thing that he notices right there. Hiding between the crease of the pages is a flower petal, glistening dark red—nearly black under the faint lamplight. His sleep-addled mind easily filters out this peculiarity, temporarily unfit to bring to the forefront of his thoughts that he never takes this book to the store.

And that he does not keep any flowers at all in his bedroom.

The flower petal slips out of his hazy focus the next time he blinks, though nothing in particular ever does stick to memory as he drags himself to bed. The world disappears into clouds the moment his head hits the pillow.

「 死 」

It’s a week later when the red-haired man walks through the shop’s door again.

“Ah,” recognizes Tetsuya. “Welcome back, okyaku-san. What would you like today?” He ducks out of that mismatched gaze, busying himself with a superficial perusal of some peonies at the corner.

He’s trying not to let the fact that they’re, yet again, alone in the shop unnerve him, but it proves rather difficult when he feels the weight of an unwavering stare boring holes into his back.

“The same as before,” the customer instructs Tetsuya with that sharp timbre of his voice. It’s laced with a sweetness you can only find in a potent dose of poison, although by then it’s too late because you already feel your body succumbing to it. And though Tetsuya never tries to form any obtuse conclusions about other people, he can’t help but wonder if his customer is a man who’s very used to getting his way. At the very least, Tetsuya doesn’t seem to be immune to his voice.

He gathers the flowers: lilies, chrysanthemums, camellias; all in the pure shade of white. Tetsuya must admit they strike a nice contrast against the taller man’s neatly ironed dark grey suit. He took note of this last time as well, how the man looks like he’s stepped straight out of some gala. His tie matches perfectly with the scarlet bangs brushing across the top of his forehead, not a wrinkle in sight.

It’s a mystery why someone who looks so important would ever show up in the decrepit parts of town, but Tetsuya doesn’t have a heart to complain about those who pay so kindly.

Like last time, not many words are exchanged. The last thing for Tetsuya to remember is always the sudden drop in temperature whenever the man leaves.

Surely the cold winds must have made their way to this city already.

「 死 」

For the first time in life Tetsuya dreams of waking up. This cannot be anything but a dream, after all. Why else would he be covered in flowers—carnations so vivid and _red_ his clouded vision mistakes it for blood. Suddenly he feels like he’s drowning in it, and his body flails wildly, kicking his thick bedsheets right off the bed with a panicked yell.

The sheets make a muffled thump as they hit the floor, and the blue-haired man finds himself gaping at an empty bed, no sign of flowers anywhere. Not a single glare of red inside this black-and-white room.

He wipes at his brow with a shaky hand. Visions of the past begin flashing through his mind, dragging him back to a time where he ran out of the house on tiny scraped knees to buy the red carnations his grandmother asked for.

Tetsuya’s breath gathers like cobwebs in his throat. He has to hold back the urge to dry heave.

It takes a while before his lungs stop trembling.

「 死 」

Tetsuya arrives at his grandmother’s grave with a bouquet of purple petunias—her favorite—in hand. The sun is barely peeking through the concrete jungle behind him, and he breathes in the fog and the silence of a sleeping world. He doesn’t take days off, not even on his grandmother’s death anniversary, so he wakes up two hours early just to prepare the flowers and drop by her grave.

It’s become a normal sight, embedded in his life over the course of a decade. A graveyard without any signs of life around, shrouded in murky greys the sun cowers behind during the breaking hours of dawn.

Tetsuya hardly minds the solitude, but it doesn’t take long for him to suffocate from the grimy air of death, hanging so low he can almost feel its bony hands on his shoulder.

Only today, something sticks out of the usual scenery. White invades the fringes of his vision, making him turn to find, laid across a tombstone only a few feet away, a very familiar looking set of flowers. Ones he is dead sure were arranged by him.

Instantly a dual-colored gaze pops up into mind. Now Tetsuya knows what these flowers were for.

Though he has always been more curious about _whom_ , and so he indulges his curiosity, making his way around the graveyard. The soles of his shoes scratching the dirt track is the only sound filling his ears, but he still feels the sky crashing down around him when he notices the elegant scrawl of text engraved onto the grave.

 

 

 

**[ Kuroko Tetsuya**

**16th December 2003, Age 8 ]**

 

 

 

There’s a hand on his shoulder, but no matter how many minutes continue to pass, Tetsuya cannot tear his eyes away from his grave.

“It is time to let go now,” whispers a familiar voice, taking up a much softer tone. Any other day it might have soothed him, but all Tetsuya can feel is the sharp edge of a knife slowly being twisted into his back.

The cold air burns around the wetness trailing down his face as he attempts to speak. “I… I only wanted to fulfill my grandmother’s wish.”

“And you have.”

“A—… Akashi-kun.” The rest of his words don’t make it past the hollow of his throat, freezing along with time as every sound in the world, including the wind biting at his cheeks, finally dies.

Akashi’s hand drops down to wrap around a frail wrist. Tetsuya has only seconds to look behind him, the last of his decaying thoughts swirling around a vision of red and gold.

Then, gently like there’s a blanket of feathers encircling his joints, Kuroko Tetsuya feels himself lifted out of existence.

 

**Author's Note:**

> tbh this fic should be categorized in gen instead of M/M but who am i kidding every fic of mine, i've written with the implications of akkr getting laid sOMEWHERE...


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